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KINSHASA (Reuters) ? On the streets of Congo's capital Kinshasa earlier this week, a car carrying a Westerner was stoned by angry locals convinced the outside world helped rig the outcome of the central African giant's presidential election.
"White man, white man, you have stolen the elections for Kabila!" they shouted in the incident, two days after incumbent Joseph Kabila was declared winner of the November 28 vote.
In a country long scarred by outside meddling, the notion of the "international community" has a bitter taste for many Congolese, from Kinshasa's poor up to the professional elite who grumble at boisterous lunch parties about foreign influence.
Kabila's main rival, 79-year-old opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, has declared himself the real winner of an election marred by chaos and widespread irregularities which he says masked an outright robbery of the vote by the Kabila camp.
While Kabila dismisses such allegations, many in the Democratic Republic of Congo - especially backers of Tshisekedi's UDPS party - accuse world powers of standing back and allowing Kabila to snatch a new term in the cynical calculation that this will open up access to Congo's sub-soil riches, from copper through to gold and oil.
Tshisekedi has called for outside help to resolve the dispute. But the fact is there is no international mandate or appetite to enter the arena to settle the festering dispute.
"I hope the UDPS is not banking on international involvement as it is not happening," said a senior diplomat in Kinshasa who is closely involved in the election process.
"The number of killings, the demonstrations ... would have to get pretty bad for that to happen," added the diplomat, who like others interviewed by Reuters requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
"We're trying to create some space for mediation," the official said, referring to an ongoing low-profile strategy offering to resolve the Kabila-Tshisekedi deadlock and end election-linked violence that has killed at least 20 people.
"CONGO FATIGUE"
The next few days will prove crucial, as Congo waits for its Supreme Court to decide whether to validate provisional results that gave Kabila 48.97 percent of the vote against 32.33 percent for Tshisekedi.
Some draw comparisons with Ivory Coast, where last year's vote resulted in two men claiming victory until U.N. and French forces helped to facilitate the arrest of incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and install his challenger Alassane Ouattara in power.
But there is no chance of a repeat scenario in Congo.
Unlike in Ivory Coast, where the United Nations was able to make its own tally of votes and was mandated to sign off on results showing Ouattara the victor, its MONUSCO mission in Congo helped with logistics but has no bigger political role.
Congo's 2006 election, its first since a 1998-2003 war, was organized under the auspices of the United Nations and funded by hundreds of millions of dollars of donor cash. This time the donor funds amount to merely dozens of millions and Kinshasa-based diplomats have no powers of arbitration as before.
Moreover, Congo's elections have had to compete for media and diplomatic attention with allegations of vote-rigging in Russia and the tangled aftermath of the "Arab Spring" uprisings, not to mention Europe's spiraling sovereign debt crisis.
According to two sources involved, U.N. Security Council members informed heads of the Congo U.N. mission during a video conference that there was no chance of extending the world body's mandate beyond its existing logistical role.
"There has been a gradual political disengagement in Congo," Jean-Marie Guehenno, the U.N.'s former head of peacekeeping who is now a professor at Columbia University, told Reuters.
"There is definitely Congo fatigue after 11 years and billions of dollars. There is no appetite for repeating the Ivory Coast experience," he added.
Concern over Congo's election and the risk of unrest was raised long ago, by local politicians right through to international observers and think tanks such as the International Crisis Group.
But criticism of the polls by foreign governments has been muted, partly because they are billed as being Congolese-run, and partly because of unease over Tshisekedi, seen in most diplomatic circles as stubborn and awkward.
DEFYING MATHS
While preparations for the vote were consistently behind schedule, talk of delay to allow better preparation was rejected. Both the United Nations and the United States expressed optimism it would go smoothly right up to polling day.
While millions did manage to vote despite delays, confusion and outbreaks of violence, many others never got the chance or saw their ballots lost in the anarchic counting afterwards, according to observer missions.
In one district of Kabila's southern stronghold of Katanga, turnout was recorded at a mathematics-defying 100.14 percent, with Kabila winning 99.98 percent of the votes.
The election commission website also showed that the results from nearly 2,000 polling stations in the capital Kinshasa, an opposition stronghold, had not been tallied.
Yet some backers of the process were swift with praise. Two days after the vote, African observer missions hailed the fact the elections were managed despite all the challenges.
"This is not the international community's finest hour in Congo," said Congolese blogger Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution who also worked on the ground as an election observer in the vote.
"Whether or not diplomats like Tshisekedi, he is an icon to the Congolese ... For a segment of the population, he is the man who best articulates their aspirations and dreams," he added of the disconnect between Tshisekedi's local and foreign image.
Kabila acknowledges "mistakes" in the election process but said his win is not in doubt. He accused the U.S.-based Carter Center observer mission - a rare international voice to openly question the credibility of the vote - of "baseless" criticism.
While none of the international missions have said they have evidence to suggest Tshisekedi may have won, the growing weight of material raising questions about the vote is making it harder to brush over the problems.
BUSINESS AS USUAL?
Couched in diplomatic language, the United Nations on December 12 issued its strongest statement yet, noting "with deep concern" the observer mission reports and "strongly" urging the election commission to investigate them.
While there are reports of mass ballot-stuffing, it is the final compilation of the results at centers in Kinshasa rather than the tallies made at individual polling stations that most observers are concerned about.
The European Union estimates that votes from some 5,000 polling stations, or a possible 1.6 million votes, did not make it into a final tally. But prospects for a recount seem dim as the compilation centers were often chaotic and many ballots appear simply to have been lost.
The Catholic Church had 30,000 observers on voting day, the largest observer network by far. It says it is in a position to know the real winner and has issued a statement saying the provisional election results "do not conform to the truth."
Yet while the church wields influence in this overwhelmingly Christian country, there is little prospect of it having a role in sorting out the current dispute.
For now, foreign governments and bodies are repeating calls for restraint and for the opposition to channel any complaints through the courts and not out onto the street.
Third-placed Vital Kamerhe, who has thrown his weight behind Tshisekedi, has lodged just such a complaint. But there are questions about the independence of Congo's Supreme Court, which even sitting magistrates say is stuffed with pro-Kabila judges -- a charge it has vehemently denied.
As always after a contested vote, there are warnings that whoever emerges as victor will face problems of legitimacy - a major risk in a vast country where, eight years after the war formally ended, there are simmering rebellions across much of the east and frustrations are running high elsewhere.
The George Soros-funded Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), among others, has warned that the lack of credible results risks plunging Congo back into violence that the United Nations and its peacekeepers could not contain.
Yet for now, according to one diplomat, ambassadors in Kinshasa are hoping the tensions do not escalate into violence before a swearing-in ceremony for Kabila scheduled for around December 20 that shows all the signs of being well-attended.
"They will probably all turn up, therefore rubber stamping the results," said the diplomat. "So it is business as usual."
(Editing by Mark John and Mark Heinrich)
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New York ? Florida's Palm Beach County is cracking down on truancy by punishing parents, and it's hardly the first place in the nation to do so
A Florida county is holding an unusual threat over parents' heads: If your kids miss too much school ? specifically, more than 15 days over a 3-month period ? you could go to jail. And Palm Beach County isn't the first in the nation to resort to jailing parents to crack down on truancy. Four key questions:
What's going on?
Florida's Palm Beach County has created a new court specifically focused on truancy cases. While Florida has long had a law that states that parents can face up to two months of jail time if their child (aged 6 to 16) has more than 15 unexcused absences in three months, there was no infrastructure to enforce it ? until now. Schools lacked the personnel to bring the cases to court, and prosecutors were more focused on violent crimes. The new truancy court is currently in a trial period, targeting kids from kindergarten to third grade.
SEE MORE: A 20th baby for the Duggars: Too risky?
?
How big of a problem is truancy in Palm Beach?
It's a significant issue. In in the 2009-2010 school year, 6.6 percent of the county's 198,351 students racked up 21 or more unexcused absences.
Is Florida the only state with such a law?
No. Earlier this year, nearly a dozen parents in Baltimore City were sent to prison for their kids' truancy. In Orange County, Calif., at least five parents have gone to jail since a tough anti-truancy law went into effect earlier this year. Parents in Alabama, Texas, and North California have also been sent to the slammer for failing to ensure their kids attended classes.
SEE MORE: To Train Up A Child: The book that's leading parents to kill?
?
Is this the right way to deal with truancy?
Not everyone thinks so. This "seems extreme and maybe even counterproductive," says Amy Reiter at The Stir. "If the parent is in jail, how will she then help get her kid to school?" Teens especially need to learn to take responsibility for their own actions, not have their parents pay for their crimes. Earlier this year, the NAACP filed suit against a school district in Pennsylvania that had fined a woman $8,000 over her kids' truancy. The organization argued that the kids had stopped going to school because they were being bullied and harassed.
Sources: Baltimore Sun, The Stir, Sun Sentinel, Yahoo
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2011) ? Compared to Neanderthals, modern humans have a better sense of smell. Differences in the temporal lobes and olfactory bulbs also suggest a combined use of brain functions related to cognition and olfaction.
The increase of brain size is intimately linked to the evolution of humanity. Two different human species, Neanderthals and modern humans, have independently evolved brains of roughly the same size but with differing shapes. This could indicate a difference in the underlying brain organization.
In a study published this week by Nature Communications, led by Markus Bastir and Antonio Rosas, of the Spanish Natural Science Museum (CSIC), high-tech medical imaging techniques were used to access internal structures of fossil human skulls. The researchers used sophisticated 3D methods to quantify the shape of the basal brain as reflected in the morphology of the skeletal cranial base. Their findings reveal that the human temporal lobes, involved in language, memory and social functions as well as the olfactory bulbs are relatively larger in Homo sapiens than in Neanderthals. "The structures which receive olfactory input are approximately 12% larger in modern humans than in Neanderthals," the authors explain.
These findings may have important implications for olfactory capacity and human behaviour. In modern humans the size of the olfactory bulbs is related to the capacity of detection and discrimination of different smells. Olfaction is among the oldest sense in vertebrates. "Also, it is the only one that establishes a direct connection between the brain and its environment," says Markus Bastir, the lead author of the study. While other senses must pass through different cortical filters, olfaction goes from the environment right into the highest centres of the brain. What is more, "olfaction never sleeps," adds Antonio Rosas, "because we always breathe and perceive smells." The neuronal circuitry of olfaction coincides with that of memory and emotion (the limbic system), "which explains the enormous memory retention and vital intensity of olfaction-mediated life events."
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, who also contributed to the current publication, could recently show differences in the patterns of brain development between modern humans and Neanderthals during a critical phase for cognitive development. "In the first year of life the brains of Neanderthals and modern humans develop differently," says Philipp Gunz from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. "Modern humans have smaller faces and smaller noses than their Neanderthal cousins. However, the part of the brain that processes smells, is bigger in modern humans than in Neanderthals." "Evidence is accumulating that Neanderthals and modern humans independently evolved large brains and that their brains might have worked differently. Our new study offers a glimpse into the functional significance of these developmental differences," adds Jean-Jacques Hublin, who heads the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
Olfactory information projects to brain regions directly responsible for processing of emotion, motivation, fear, memory, pleasure and also attraction. Neuroscientists have coined the term "higher olfactory functions" to describe those brain functions which combine cognition (memory, intuition, perception, judgment) and olfaction. The greater olfactory bulbs and relatively larger temporal lobes in H. sapiens compared to any other human species may point towards improved and different olfactory sense possibly related to the evolution of behavioural aspects and social functions.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111214130001.htm
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Gemenid meteor shower watchers can't figure out where all the material in the event comes from. Asteroid?3200 Phaethon, the apparent source of the Gemenid meteor shower, doesn't seem to shed enough rock and dust to account for the shower's intensity.?
Roll up, roll up for the mystery (meteor) shower: the Geminids.
Skip to next paragraphBy now you've probably heard that tonight's the night for what is arguably one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year, the Geminids.
The shower earns its name from its apparent point of origin, or radiant, in the constellation Gemini.
But where many meteor showers represent Earth's encounter with dust from a comet, the Geminids appear to have an odd duck of a source: an asteroid that some now call a rock comet.
And it's not clear from recent observations whether the object, known as 3200 Phaethon, is kicking off enough material to account for the intensity of the meteor shower Earth encounters.
A team of astronomers identified the debris gap in a paper published in the Astronomical Journal in November 2010. And researchers are still puzzling over it.
Although the first recorded observations of the Geminids don't appear until the early 1860s, modeling studies of the debris' orbit suggests that the stream is anywhere from 200 to 6,000 years old.
3200 Phaethon was discovered by NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite in 1983. Once scientists determined its orbit, the orbit closely matched with the orbit of the debris stream.
One of the asteroid's key features is its proximity to the sun at closest approach. It comes nearer the sun than any known asteroid, well inside the orbit of Mercury. This allows surface temperatures to reach 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
In their 2010 paper, David Jewitt and Jing Li at the University of California at Los Angeles looked at images from one of a pair of NASA sun-watching satellites taken of 3200 Phaethon during its close approach to the sun. Its brightness increased suddenly, indicating that it was shedding material, just as a comet might.
Given the asteroid's rocky makeup, the team posited that the object's relatively quick swing into and out of this hot zone leads to rock fracturing when heated. Comets, on the other hand, shed material when the ices they contain heat and shift directly from solid to gas. In the process, a comet also ejects dust and rock bound up with the ices.
To account for the intensity of the Geminid stream, the duo calculated, the 30-mile-wide 3200 Phaethon would have to repeat the shedding process 10 times per orbit, something no one has observed.
Dr. Jewitt allows in an e-mail exchange that their mass estimate could be off, and that additional outbursts during each orbit could emerge with more-systematic observations.
But for now, the grit gap remains.
So, bundle up, grab a chaise lounge, a Thermos of hot chocolate, and head out to see the show overnight tonight or even Wednesday night. The peak actually is expected to occur at about 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Wednesday.
But the shower, which typically produces more than 100 meteors an hour during its peak under dark skies, will be a bit less spectacular than it otherwise might be. Blame the bright, if waning, moon. Moonlight will wash out the dimmer meteor streaks.
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(Reuters) ? Baseball home run king Barry Bonds should receive no jail time for his conviction on a single criminal count related to an investigation of steroids in sports, his attorneys argued in a court filing on Tuesday.
A Northern California jury convicted Bonds in April on one count of obstruction of justice, but deadlocked on three other counts of lying to a grand jury.
The steroids scandal has tarnished some of the biggest stars in baseball.
Bonds is scheduled to be sentenced in a San Francisco federal court on December 16. In a sentencing memorandum submitted on Tuesday, his attorneys said Bonds deserved probation.
Among the reasons for no prison, Bonds' lawyers cited a long history of good works, done away from the public eye.
"He has deliberately not chosen to use the many years he has devoted to causes that he values to enhance his public stature as an athlete and celebrity," attorney Allen Ruby wrote.
U.S. prosecutors have not yet submitted their sentencing recommendation for Bonds.
The Bonds prosecution stemmed from his testimony to a 2003 grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, or BALCO.
Testifying to the grand jury, Bonds admitted getting flaxseed oil, vitamins, protein shakes and creams from his trainer, but he said he had no knowledge of human growth hormones or steroids. He said no one ever injected him other than medical doctors.
Bonds was the National League's most valuable player seven times and finished his career in 2007 with 762 home runs, a Major League baseball record. Bonds, who spent much of his career with the San Francisco Giants, also set the single-season home run record with 73 in 2001.
He was indicted three months after breaking Hank Aaron's career homer record in 2007.
The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is United States of America v. Barry Lamar Bonds, 07-cr-0732.
(Reporting by Dan Levine; editing by Philip Barbara)
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HOUSTON ? The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday pledged $50 million to a program designed to restore seven river basins from Florida to Texas in an attempt to show a blueprint for rebuilding the Gulf Coast's fragile ecosystem is more than just another federal report.
The USDA's announcement accompanied the presentation of the final report of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, a team established by President Barack Obama after the April 2010 oil spill that highlighted decades of environmental decline in the Gulf of Mexico.
The task force's plan for reviving the Gulf and the ecosystems and watersheds linked to it calls for rebuilding and conserving wetlands; cleaning polluted rivers and streams; strengthening communities along the storm-prone area and better preparing them for the storms that brew over the warm ocean waters; and allowing more sediment to naturally flow downstream to slowly rebuild barrier islands meant to provide natural protection from storms.
"We are all dedicated to making sure that the treasures we grew up with are still around for future generations," said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, a New Orleans native who chaired the task force.
Jackson and officials from other federal and state agencies made the announcements in Houston at a summit sponsored by the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies. The summit focuses on the Gulf, its importance to the U.S. economy and the need to reverse decades of damage and neglect.
Jackson said the USDA project ? an offshoot of an existing national program aimed at conserving, improving and preserving the nation's watersheds ? is only the first of many initiatives she expects will be announced in the coming months.
"I expect a flurry of activity to get some meat on those bones," she said.
The Gulf of Mexico, long neglected and under-funded, is a vital part of the nation's economy. More than 90 percent of the nation's offshore oil and natural gas production originates in the Gulf and 13 of the top 20 ports by tonnage are in the region. If the five coastal states were a country, it would rank seventh in global gross domestic product. In 2009, the Gulf Coast produced 30 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.
While this committee has been assigned the task of identifying problems and pinpointing possible solutions, Congress has been considering a bill called the Restore Act that would allow most of the penalties BP would pay for fouling the waters to go back toward restoring the environment in the five Gulf states: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Texas. The House is to hold hearings on the proposed bill later this week.
The first project administered by the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service gives farmers and ranchers the finances they need to change their land or water use practices to help clean, conserve and preserve the watersheds, said Harris Sherman, the USDA's undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment. The USDA provides them with a "tool kit" of options for joining the program, he added.
The program ? called the Gulf of Mexico Initiative ? also requires matching funds from state, local and nonprofit entities, and so the funds available could total some $90 million, Sherman said. Similar projects are already under way elsewhere, and have successfully reversed some damage done to waterways.
The $50 million commitment to the Gulf Coast, however, is unique because it significantly increases the department's funding to the region. Already, Sherman said, officials have met with ranchers and farmers in the area and are confident they will participate. The funding will be made available over the next three years, with the first $20 million available immediately.
The seven river basins identified for immediate assistance are already on the federal Clean Water Act's list of polluted waterways. In Alabama, the program's goal in the Weeks Bay watershed is to reduce agricultural-related nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment running downstream and to preserve wildlife habitats.
In a watershed shared by Alabama and Florida, the program aims to reduce the sediments and nutrients that flow into tributaries of the Escambia River. The USDA believes this will ultimately "improve wildlife habitat and the quality of water delivered to Pensacola Bay" and the Gulf. The project has similar goals for another Florida watershed.
In Louisiana, it will focus on the Baratoria-Terrebonne estuary and the Mermentau basin, once again by reducing the harm fertilizers have as they flow downstream from rivers and streams into the Gulf of Mexico. In Mississippi the Jourdan River basin is the focus, while in Texas the goal is to clean up the Guadalupe River basin.
Officials believe the project will improve water quality for thousands of residents in Pensacola, Fla., Mobile, Ala., and San Antonio.
"We're focusing on priority areas where we can get the greatest gains," Sherman said.
___
You can follow Ramit Plushnick Masti at https://twitter.com//RamitMastiAP
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